Chapter Text
Summer 1996
Northwest Tokyo
It had been a long and miserable day at the Tendo Dojo. This, at least in the mind of Saotome Ranma, was evidenced by the fact that he was currently a she , the unfortunate side effect of the ancient Chinese curse she still hadn’t managed to dispel after three years of living with it.
It was her - his - whatever - birthday. No one in the Tendo dojo had remembered except Akane. She had offered to bake a cake. He had told her to just go to the store and buy one. She had piledriven him into the koi pond. Things went downhill from there. Hours had dragged on and nothing had happened except the usual shit - Shampoo still thought crushing his ribcage in a submission hold was a good way to get a date, Ryoga showed up and misinterpreted the whole thing courtesy of some new martial arts technique, Ukyo had offered to pay off his tab if she got to go on a birthday date with him, Kodachi had tried to use her female form as crocodile chow. Things had happened, but nothing had changed. Oh, except she was currently female. Everyone else had gone to bed, but she’d stayed up, listening to the chirp of crickets and wondering why she bothered.
With what? Well. With anything.
Ranma thought. Went over to the stove, turned on the heat, put a tea kettle on. Then she went over to the kotatsu and turned on the TV. If nothing else, watching Takeshi Kitano reruns could probably cheer her up, right?
Maybe? Probably not? There was no way around it: Ranma Saotome was a loser, boy or girl.
She didn’t even notice the channel change, the screen flickering, winking out, and then cutting to a long, long highway somewhere in some desert. She listened for the sound of water boiling-
And then she heard music begin to play.
Rock. Hard rock. Like, opening-chord riff rock. Probably American.
See me ride out of the sunset…
Female voice. Older woman. Off-key. She turned to the TV, saw the desert, saw something bright in the distance-
On your Color TV screen…
Okay. It was definitely coming from the TV. Had she turned it to some music video channel and forgotten? Dang. No. She was pretty sure she hadn’t.
She focused. Her hot water had to be ready by now, right? If this was some sort of stupid martial-arts trick she wanted to at least be male to meet it. Anything Goes TV-manipulation? Would be all but useless in anywhere except an electronics store…
Out for all that I can get…
The voice was louder. She hadn’t turned the volume up, so that was strange. She could hear the nuance of the voice better. She sounded slightly sloshed.
If you know what I mean.
Whoever it was, she just dropped her voice like two octaves. Like she was going from ‘hello ma’am nice to meet you’ to ‘your son calls me mommy too’-
Women to the left of me…
No no no no no. She was not a pervert. Akane could complain all she wanted, but she had never even so much as touched those gravure mags Hiroshi and Daisuke wanted to sell him on. Never mind Akane - Kasumi would hate him, Nabiki would extort him for the rest of all time-
And women to the riiiiiiiiight…
Actually, now that she looked closer, there was something on that TV desert road. Kinda bright and shiny. Getting bigger fast.
Ain’t got no gun!
It was pink. Like, bright neon pink. A car, some American make she didn’t recognize.
Ain’t got no knife!
Holy shit. She could hear the engine roaring-
Donchu start no fiiiiiiight…
The pink car had grown to fill the entire screen. There was a woman in the driver’s seat.
Waitaminut. She was the one singing. The one driving.
Cause I’m-
She was heading straight for her!
T.N.T!
In the course of that single acronym several things happened.
First, Ranma scrambled back on instinct. It was a good instinct, too, because at the next moment the car grew to fill the screen, pushing through it like a film of glass - then bursting through.
Second, Ranma began to scream. Loud. Hard.
For, third, the car and the woman inside it had begun to expand beyond the proportions of the television as it left its confines, expanding out like some sort of trans-dimensional singing balloon monster, engine howling like the angels of the apocalypse. It seemed to angle up for a moment-
Then the car burst through the outer confines of the Tendo’s house, smashing through the paper screen leading out to the koi pond effortlessly, slamming down onto the wooden floor-
And before Ranma could so much as run, the woman reached out a mocha-brown hand, grabbed her by what little collar she had, and tossed her into the passenger’s seat.
The woman kept singing. Ranma kept screaming.
I’m dy-no-mite!
They shot through the wall around the dojo even faster, reinforced bunker-grade concrete that the Tendos had put up in the blind hope of deterring Shampoo shattering like glass, not even scratching the car. The music was still going - some very deep part of Ranma’s brain that hadn’t been paralyzed in cosmic dread was going huh, so it’s a karaoke track-
T.N.T! And I’ll win the fight!
The car swerved, a perfect 90-degree angle cleared in about three feet. Ranma’s martial artist senses kicked in, and she tried to kick herself out of the car- but it was no good. Somewhere in all that mayhem the woman had somehow secured her with a seatbelt that would not come off.
She kept screaming-
And then the car screeched to a halt.
The volume dropped like a eunuch’s nuts after castration-
And then the woman reached out a hand and slapped her. Hard.
Ranma shut up.
“Oi!” the woman said, as Ranma briefly saw double from the force of the blow. “What the hell’s your problem? Ty’rs pubic hair, it’s like I’m kidnapping you or something!”
Ranma’s mouth moved faster than her brain. “Oh so this isn’t a kidnapping! Well la-de-fuckin-da I never realized that! Whadda revelation! Fuck you crazy bitch!”
“Aw c’mon, you knew this was coming, don’t try to- hollllld up.”
Ranma gulped. The woman was glaring at her the same way Akane did just before she’d punt her stratospheric, pointing a long manicured nail at her. The rock music kept on going, droning really. Ranma could vaguely hear shouting behind her, sounded like the Tendos. Maybe they could rescue her from this crazy magical woman?
Somehow she doubted it. Somehow, given the look the woman was giving her, she doubted she’d live long enough.
“You’re Ranma Saotome, right? ‘Cause last I checked, Ranma Saotome is a dude.”
Instinct kicked in. “I AM A GUY!” Then she gulped again, because maybe she could have fooled this psycho into thinking she was some relation but it was way too late for that now.
The woman blinked. Squinted at her. “Ahhhh,” she said. “Jusenkyo Curse. Right.”
With that, she stepped on the gas, and then they were moving, past the Tendo dojo, through the suburbs of Nerima well beyond the residential speed limit, towards - what?
Well, Ranma had to admit, she had no dang idea what.
Okay. Okay. Fuck. She had to calm down. This would be so much easier if she were in boy-form. She clenched her fist, channeled her ki, prepared to unleash a hypersonic punch-
“Don’t.” The woman held up her hand, but stayed focused on the road.
Her arm froze . Her ki channels went haywire as blood seemed to drain from that arm. And the woman seemed unfazed.
Actually, now that she got a closer look at the woman, she was - attractive. Older than Ranma, if the platinum-white hair was any indication, but her face seemed smooth and ageless, her eyes a strange deep purple. She was - curvy. Like, Shampoo or Ukyo curvy, everything put in just the right place, her mocha skin - was she some sort of foreigner or something? - flowing in soft, pillowy motions into cleavage that seemed to have no end to it save her sparkly purple dress. Actually, now that she thought about it, this woman was in some sort of fancy evening wear. The kind of thing Ranma had tried to seduce Ryoga with that one time. And those markings on her face? What the hell were those?
“So anyway, Ranma,” the woman said as if she hadn’t just snatched her out of her home in the most bizarre way possible, “Happy Birthday! As a little present, I’m gonna take you to this nice little hostess club I know out in Shibuya, and then we’re gonna talk business, m’kay?”
“What?”
The woman turned to look at her, then tapped a button on the car’s console. The roof closed up - of course it was a convertible, Ranma thought.
“Okay, sorry about that. There’s this place in Shibuya called the Kabuki Riverbed where they’ve got lots of girls and they don’t really follow the usual legal shit, so I figured we’d pop your cherry - you are a virgin, right? At least in boy form?”
Ranma blanched. “Whaaaaa?” Managed to squeak together a coherent response. “What kinda question is that?”
“It’s a little personal, I know, but since we’re starting what could be one of the most important chapters of your mortal life I figured it’s best to start things off on the right foot. Make you a real man, you know?”
“I am a man! It’s a-”
“Ancient Chinese curse! I know, I know. I can read your energy sig. Not that hard to do.”
“Ugh. Look, lady, I don’t even know you, and I have a fiance - okay, more like three fiances, but any one of them will kill me if I go off to some-”
The car pulled over and stopped. The woman looked like she was about to chew her head off, starting with her face and ending with her pigtail.
“You don’t know me.”
“Nope. I mean, maybe we met? Maybe my dad engaged me to you for two thousand yen or something, but I’m telling you I’ve already got fiances plural so if you could just pop my seatbelt-”
The woman promptly whacked her head against the steering wheel. Raised her neck back to a straight position. Did it again. Clutched the wheel like it was a neck she was wringing.
“Arrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhh. Of course he didn’t. Of course that prick tried to think he could run and hide, huh? Didn’t believe me? Didn’t even bother to thank me for everything I did. Insolent sack of lard.” She whirled to face him, her eyes almost glowing with restrained fury.”
“Alright, Ranma. Let’s start this over. You’re Ranma Saotome, son of Genma Saotome. You both, I assume, do martial arts. You turn into a girl when splashed with cold water and back into a man when splashed with hot water. Correct?”
“Um. Yeah.”
Great! Her plump lips curved into a broad smile. “I’m Urd. Goddess Second Class Limited License. As of today, your eighteenth birthday, I’m your patron deity, and you’re my hero. In the Greek sense, of course.”
“Waitwhat?” Goddess? License? Patrons? Gods were bad enough, especially pricklords like that Saffron guy. This Urd lady didn’t give off the same vibes, but if she could TV-teleport - use magic like it was nothing - she probably was. But - “Patron what now?”
“Look, you’re probably too old to remember any of this shit, it was eight years ago. Just - I’m a goddess, I’m large and in charge, and we’ll just leave it at that. Now,” she grinned, “You wanna lose your man-virginity in a few hours?”
Ranma’s mind and ghost-libido warred with each other with the ferocity of clashing armies. Citadels fell, cannons thundered, dick jokes were made. Neither side won. “Um - Yes! I mean no! I mean yes but!”
“Yes but?”
“I mean I-” How to put it? I want to lose my virginity with Akane? Yeah right. Like she’d even let him. And the others - oof. Possible, but there would be consequences. So - “I, uh, I can’t?”
“Really,” Urd cooed. “You mean you can’t put out? Limp Bizkit, as they say in America? That’s unfortunate…”
“NO!” Like hell he was gonna let anyone dispute his manhood! “My peepee works fine, I’ll have you know! It’s of average length, and uh, operation!”
“So what do you mean when you say-”
“Oh come on! I’m engaged! I have a fian- three fiancees! I have obligations! I-”
Urd shushed him with a single finger. “So. Sexually repressed? You get out much? Play around with girl form?”
“I’m not tellin’ you!”
“Oh yes-you-are,” Urd singsonged. “Like I said, I’m a goddess. Your patron goddess. So we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, okay?”
Ranma hmphed, crossed her arms. “Like hell we are. I just said-”
“Yeah. I heard you. So, these fiancees. Tell me about them.”
“No.”
“Really.”
“No.”
“Gonna play the petulant toddler on me, kid?”
“What the hell does petulant mean?”
“It - whatever. I tell you what. You answer me three questions and I’ll let you call home and explain where you are. Not a rescue operation, but just a little explainer, so no one starts calling the cops. Then we go someplace nice. No sex, just a bar or something.” She burped. “I need a drink, though. Then I’ll explain all the stupid shit your deadbeat dad conveniently neglected to tell you about the nature of the contract he and I made back in ‘88, when you were ten. Then you go home, go to bed, begin your life as an adult. Everyone’s happy.”
Ranma stared at her. “So you’ll let me call but not, you know, beg to be rescued?”
“You won’t want to do that. Once I get your dad on the line everything will be made very clear.”
“Uh. Okay. But you call first, then you get to ask questions.”
“Great.”
“And I get to give you evasive answers so I don’t have to explain nothing.”
“Nice to know in advance.” Urd beamed like a model, started her car again, then pulled out a big fat carphone. She dialled the number.
Beep. Beep. Beep. On and on they drove. It was some sort of hands-free model, Ranma guessed. Cool.
Wait, no, not cool. He still had no idea if he was going to have his kidneys ripped out by magical Yakuza or not.
Then again - Urd. Name felt familiar. A monosyllabic click of the tongue. And it stood to reason his dad didn’t tell him about some hot goddess with magical TV powers. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, was the Genma motto.
And then the phone picked up.
“Hello, Tendo Residence.” Yep, Soun. Sounding like he had officially resigned from the prime position of Giving A Shit.
“He-llo!” Urd said in a girlish voice before Ranma could cut in, then shushed him again. “I need to talk to Genma Saotome, if you’d be so kind.”
“Ah, Mister Saotome is not at home at the moment. I’m afraid-”
“Buuuuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllshit,” Urd drawled. “I’ve got his son with me in my very nice pink cadillac. I want to, let’s say, discuss terms.”
“Ah, you’ve kidnapped Ranma! Well, why didn’t you just say so?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it a kid napping per se. More like an impromptu night out on the town. So if you’d be so kind-”
“Alright. Genma!” Soun shouted. “It’s for you! Some woman who says she’s with Ranma!”
“Growf!” was the muted reply on the other end.
“Ah, Genma is currently a little - unable to communicate verbally right now. Well, you’ll just have to try again at a later-”
“DAD!” Ranma shouted into the phone. “GET YOUR DUMB FURRY ASS OVER HERE THIS INSTANT! WHY THE HELL DID YOU CONTRACT ME WITH SOME CRAZY MAGIC LADY WHO SAYS SHE’S GODDESS?!”
“Growf growf growf growf growf!”
“AND CHANGE BACK INTO HUMAN FORM WHILE YOU’RE AT IT!”
“Growf Growf-” There was a splash of water on the other end, and then it sounded like someone else grabbed the phone.
“Ranma!” Yep. That was dad alright. “You insolent fool! Getting into some strange woman’s car at this hour! What, you think this is some sort of special Ranma day-”
“I told you like an hour ago it was my birthday,” Ranma deadpanned. “Not surprised you forgot, dad, just kinda disappointed.”
“And you! Urd! Just what business do you have with my son? You’d best not use your powers to seduce him or I’ll come down there and screw - I mean kick your ass myself!”
“WHO’S SEDUCING RANMA?!” Oh shit. He could hear Akane all the way over there.
“Ugh,” Urd cringed. “Sorry. Migraine. Anyway. Yeah. I have business with your son regarding his contract with me. You know the one?”
“Oh I do, do I now?”
“Yeah. The one where, in return for the unsealing of the tomb of a Taoist Immortal and all the relevant items therein, I became your son’s patron deity and claim him as my hero once he turns eighteen?”
“Ha! Then you’re out of luck, because Ranma is still seventeen! You’ve got - uh- Oh. Right. Birthday. My bad.” Silence. “You know none of those scrolls were useful, right? I was very clear about how useless they were. So the contract’s null.”
“You mean you had the recipe for Chinese Kunlun Fried Chicken, the creamy fried meats of the highest tiers of the heavens, and that doesn’t count?”
“I wanted secret techniques! Fireballs! Energy Beams! Duplication!”
“That is your problem,” Urd singsonged. “It is so not mine.”
“I demand an expansion of the contact, or its prompt nullification. Alright?”
Ranma gasped. Dad was gonna bail him out here?
“In exchange for twenty-four hours of divine-tier pleasure, plus three hours every other Sunday to help me master my marital techniques, I’ll let you do as you please with my son?”
Aaaaaaaaaaand there went any chance of a son/daughter-father bonding experience. Hoo boy.
“Ha!” Urd laughed. “Let’s be real, Lard Lad McDonutstein. Just seven minutes in literal heaven would leave your gristly ass bent out of shape in so many different ways you wouldn’t be able to stand up for the rest of your life. ‘Sides, deal’s a deal. Divinities don’t do escape clauses.”
“Well.” Genma swallowed. “Alright, then. So he’s your hero, that means what?”
“Just that I get to call on him to do manly deeds, defeat sinister demonic forces, and further the cause of good, ‘good’ being defined in the Yggdrasil legal code as-”
“Of course, of course. And then he marries Akane and joins the schools.”
“That’s on him, Bloatkins. If he backs out he backs out. I’m under no liability to enforce some separate mortal marriage contract you’ve got stapled to his ass on the side.” Urd scratched her neck. “I can fax you a copy of the contract if you like, your familial seal signed in blood and all.”
“Oh. No. That won’t be necessary.”
Was it his imagination, or did he imagine his dad cracking that big-toothed shit-eating grin that seemed to adorn his face whenever he found something worth his time?
“AKANE!” Genma shouted. “RANMA’S RUN OFF WITH SOME LOOSE WOMAN!”
“Oh fuck me,” Ranma muttered as she heard the phone be handed off to some other grip. Okay, fine, he’d just have to explain that his dad was lying - again -
“RAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNMMMMMMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
“Akane wait I can explain-”
“ IDIOT! SLEAZE! PERVERT! SCUM! SLIMY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING-CREEPY-”
“HE LIED, OKAY? SHE KINDA KIDNAPPED ME AND MY DAD LIED! GOD DAMN AKANE! YOU KNOW HE’S FULLA SHIT! STOP YELLING AT ME!”
Silence. Urd had this look on her face like she’d withdrawn solely into driving, her eyes sunken and just a little baggy. Then:
“Hmph. If you were a real martial artist you wouldn’t have been kidnapped!”
“Okay. You know what? I’m not gonna rise to that insult. Yes, I’ve been semi-kidnapped by a goddess. She teleported out of the TV, remember? Blew up half the house? Not a lot martial arts can do against that.”
“Not even the Hiryu Shoten Ha Revised?”
“That worked one time. And I was kinda desperate. And it was in an open area, and Saffron actually had a battle aura, and-”
“Okay, okay! Jeez!” Akane huffed. “I’m sorry, okay? I know you had kind of a crummy birthday. This probably isn’t helping.”
“Oh. Thanks for remembering, Akane.” A year or two ago she would have said yeah and it sucked because you tried cooking again , but something held her back. Decency? Maybe. Wasn’t she a decent person already, though? Ugh.
“So you haven’t taken this loose woman to some sketchy love hotel, ordered the cheapest suite possible, and let her tie you down and have your way with you and turn you into a girl and then have your way with her and shove the handle of a riding crop up her-”
“No.”
“Oh. Then-”
“We’re just gonna talk,” Urd butted in. “Just gonna talk about his, uh, life situation. And then he’ll be back in a few hours. I think.”
“You promise?”
“I mean,” Ranma said, looking at the expression on Urd’s face, “I think it’s kinda out of my hands.”
“Fine. Then, you promise. Urd.”
“Very well - Akane, was it? I promise to make sure Ranma isn’t going to love hotels and doing all that stuff you just brought up, and that he’s back home in a few hours. Does that cool your burning passion, my sweet?”
“Uh - M-m-m-my sweeeeeeee-”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Bye Bye!”
“Like I’d ever have burning passion for that-”
Urd hung up, then looked at Ranma funny. “That’s one of your fiances?”
“That's one of your three questions?”
“Sure. We’ll go with that.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“You guess. That’s not a question.”
“Yes it is.”
“Well then, let me rephrase things. Why in the name of Thor’s thundering man-titties do you have three fiances?”
Ranma began to count off on his fingers. “Well, Akane and me were properly engaged a couple of years ago - Ucchan I guess we were engaged when I was really little but I don’t think it would hold up in court, y’know? - and Shampoo it was one of her wacky Chinese Amazon laws, you know, he who defeats you in combat you must get all, you know - Uh, I don’t think Kodachi has any legal claim but she’s richer n’ God and probably could get one if she wasn’t so crazy… Yeah. I think that’s about it.”
“Alright.”
Holy shit on a swing. Urd wasn’t fazed. Not even unnerved. All her teachers except Hinako, probably the most normal people in his corner of Nerima, thought her particular situation was - gross? Archaic? Resolvable? Urd bit her plush lip.
“So. This has been going on for awhile now, I assume - that’s not a question - by the way. So if you have several beautiful babes cavorting around in your life, all of them eligible candidates for marriage - why don’t you pick one? Last I checked, most Japanese or Chinese girls didn’t look highly on harems.”
“Hey!” Ranma huffed. “I’m a perfectly decent person. Perfectly decent. Just, you know. Extenuating circumstances.”
“That’s a non-answer if I ever heard one.”
“It’s an answer, though. So ha ha.”
Urd grinned to herself, gave him a sly look. “You want them all, then?”
“I just said I’m a perfectly decent person! I ain’t Kuno or nothin’!”
“Don’t know who that is, don’t particularly care. Okay, fine then. You’re waiting for your true love to enter from afar, who’ll so conclusively kill off these girls’ claims that everyone will wonder how they were so wrong about you.”
“What the what the huh?”
“Hm. So you know which one you like, but you’re such a waffler that you can’t commit to just taking her to your room and bending her over-”
“I’m not a pervert! Akane thinks I’m a pervert but I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not! I just sometimes turn into a girl because-”
Urd slapped her again.
When he recovered, she just kinda stared at her for awhile, her cheek still marked with her handprint. “Fuck was that for.”
“Nothing. You’re just repeating yourself is all. Besides - we’re here.”
It was true. Wherever here was, it looked like the kind of place a woman like her would frequent in an outfit like that. Looming buildings, Neon lettering ten stories above him, AC units sticking out of the walls like tumors. There was a little stairway a few meters ahead of them, leading down into who-knew where. Urd stopped the car.
“This is-”
“Shinjuku, baby!” Urd squealed. “Land of the rising fun ! Booze, boobs, bullets, blood - I keep trying to sell Kodansha on a manga set around here, big ensemble cast production, but they never go for it. Added a hot chick on a motorcycle who kills people with a scythe to the second draft. Still didn’t get it in. I shoulda done a light novel, that’s what the otaku like these days…”
“Wait, what part of bullets and blood is fun?”
“What, you can’t handle yourself in a fight? Your dad could nuke lesser dragons and you can’t live up to that.”
Ranma growled. “Never tried. I don’t think I’m bulletproof.” If this was going to be her life now, she’d have to get Cologne to train her the way she had Ryoga, with the rocks and everything. Only Cologne never did anything for her that didn’t somehow drag him closer to Shampoo. That would be problematic. Akane would try to do it and probably get herself killed, and she’d have to bail her out, and then she’d punch her because she was fine on her own, but nooooooooo-
Urd waved a hand in front of Ranma’s face. “Yello? Earth to Ranma? Look, that was a joke. Okay? Joke. Funny. Laugh. You probably won’t get shot tonight. Probably.”
“Probably. Right.”